Arbeitersturm (around 1923)

Packed so tightly they fill the entire frame, workers raise red flags high.

They surge forward like an oncoming tempest.

Undulating diagonal lines intertwine with the violently distorted bodies of the crowd.

Capturing the raw energy of society with rough yet powerful lines, this composition might seem like the work of an artist with advanced academic training.

Yet in 1923, when this piece was created, Karl Wiener was an unknown, self-taught painter who had never once attended art school.

Wiener was born in Graz, Austria, in 1901.

His father, Friedrich, worked as a proofreader for the printing office of the Social Democratic Workers' Party, and Karl grew up in a household with a deep political consciousness rooted in the working class.

However, he did not pursue an artistic career from the start.

In his youth, he earned his living as a bank clerk in Graz and Munich.

The Republic of Austria in 1923.

Following the collapse of the Austro-Hungarian Empire after its defeat in World War I, the nation was reeling under astronomical hyperinflation and chronic political turmoil.

Violent clashes with far-right groups.

Palpable, suffocating class tensions.

Amid such an explosive social climate, Wiener, around twenty-two years old, continued to teach himself to draw while working at a bank.

It was only in the following year, 1924, that he finally knocked on the doors of the Graz State Art School.

In other words, this painting was not born from technique taught by masters.

It was forged purely from his intense sympathy for the socialist struggle and his innate Expressionist sensibility.